From Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and now to Gainesville — the Root and Herbs festival at Haile Farmers’ Market celebrated the use of plants, roots and herbs in cultures from around the world.
The festival was hosted by the Florida Heritage Foods Initiative, a Santa Fe College program that focuses on connecting history and culture to food. The event, hosted at Haile Farmers Market, drew hundreds Saturday morning.
The Florida Heritage Foods Initiative program all began from an African Humanities class, Florida Organic Growers and Florida Heritage Foods coordinator Kathy Anderson said. Students secured United States Department of Agriculture funding for a project called “Africa in your garden and on your table,” where professors teach their students about the origins of the food they eat. Students take this a step further to create informative community programming like the festival.
This is the project's second farmers market event, Anderson said. Each event aims to highlight various crops within the grant through themed events connecting local food to local culture
SFC Professor Nicole Nesper, who is also the Florida Heritage Foods Initiative social media manager, said the event adds to educational efforts the group provides at other markets like Haile Farmers Market in Haile Plantation.
“We're simply adding on and bringing recipe cards for certain roots and herbs that people might not know how to use,” Nesper said.
There were also culturally specific booths that specialized on highlighting the roots and herbs specific to its culture. An example of this being the French booth Alliance Française, a nonprofit organization that aims to promote French language and culture around the world.
The festival also had a booth specifically for the Florida Heritage Foods Initiative, which provided recipe cards to use the roots and herbs featured, as well as games and scavenger hunts for children to take part in both at and after the festival.
SFC professor Sarah Cervone said an Alachua County farm-to-school program, a program that teaches students about the connection between farming, food and good health, collaborated with them to create a matching card game for children: “Go Garden.”
“It's modeled after Go Fish,” Cervone said. “Instead of saying go fish, it's designed to help young students or young children learn and identify these crops.”
The event drew students and professors from the SFC community, like Gabriel Frank, a 19-year-old SFC computer engineering freshman, who said he created a poster for his Latin American Humanities class.That was used at the event as an infographic to inform attendees about the roots and herbs of the Latin culture such as chayote.
At the festival, he learned about chayote, a squash-like vegetable with a taste similar to the blend of apple and cucumber and how widespread it’s used in Latin cuisine.
“I've learned so much,” Frank said.
Contact Morgan at morgan.liotta@ufl.edu. Follow her on Twitter @LiottaMorgan.
